In response to requests for a larger survey, last year's nine
categories were expanded to twenty. A few of the new categories are
“Favorite Shell”, “Most Desired Upgrade” and “Best Linux Web
Page”.

The Readers' Choice survey was conducted on the
Linux Journal web site, where the voting was
open for 6 weeks. Almost 3000 people participated in this year's
poll. This survey, though unscientific, is a good way to see what
products Linux Journal readers are using, what
books they are reading and what games they are playing.

Now, here are the results...

Favorite CD-ROM Distribution

Winner: Red Hat Linux

Runner Up: Debian Linux

Red Hat was the runaway winner of the “Favorite CD-ROM
Distribution” this year. Red Hat garnered almost three times as
many votes as its nearest competitor, Debian.

Favorite Linux Journal
Column

Winner: Kernel Korner

Runner Up: Best of Technical Support

Kernel Korner, our technical guide to kernel programming, won
the prize as LJ Readers' favorite column.
Second place went to the question and answer column Best of
Technical Support.

Most Used Development Tool

Winner: GCC

Runner Up: Perl

Not surprisingly, GCC won as the “Most Used Development
Tool”. Perl came in a strong second.

Primary Communications Board

Winner: Cyclades

Runner Up: Digi International

For the third year in a row Cyclades' boards have topped our
“Primary Communication Board” category.

Favorite Shell

Winner: Bash

Runner Up: Tcsh

Bash was the clear winner in the competition of the shells.
Our readers picked Bash almost four times more often than any other
shell.

Most Used Text or Word Processor

Winner: vi

Runner Up: Emacs

vi edged out Emacs in this
hotly contested category. The word processing programs lost big to
traditional text editors—most word processors got less than a
tenth of the votes that vi received.

Favorite Graphics Program

Winner: GIMP

Runner Up: Corel Draw!

GIMP, the freely distributed graphics program, won a decisive
victory over the other graphics applications. GIMP had an edge of
more than 1000 votes over runner up Corel Draw!

Favorite Web Browser

Winner: Netscape

Runner Up: Lynx

Linux Journal's Readers favor Netscape
as their web browser by a wide margin over the text-only Lynx
browser.

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